


The Two Magicians

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Happy Ending, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:45:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from the domestic life of an Angel/Deity and a Robot Prophet.  Takes place after my story 'Prayers to the God of Earth' and contains spoilers for that story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Two Magicians

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surya/gifts).



> Set five years after the end of Prayers to the God of Earth but before either epilogue. This story will probably make sense even if you haven't read that one. For this story, what you need to know is that at this point it's about 30 years post-canon and Leoben's left Earth2 and joined a Cylon colony on Earth1 (led by D'Anna, who didn't die when she stayed on Earth1 and has a major role in "Prayers" but isn't in this story). At the end of "Prayers to the God of Earth" Kara joined Leoben on Earth1, for reasons that you'll have to read that story to find out. Some of each year Kara's there, the rest of the year she's other places with other people doing other things.
> 
> Title from [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mkJyEgDwQ).

Kara returns to this first place that was called Earth in time for the first harvest of spring. It's always good to come back, and a little bit sad, because she knows she can't stay forever. Only until the last harvest of fall. Then she'll have to go, back to her other life on the other Earth, where seasons are different and they will need her in time for their spring.

Leoben tries to explain to her that nothing lasts forever, that the nature of life is change. He knows change, its cycles, like the flowing of rivers and streams. They're looking at the stars together, sitting on a ridge near their home.

"Like that star," he says. "It's been burning for ten billion years. Tonight it will collapse upon itself and bring its existence to an end. I've seen it."

She wraps his arm around her shoulders, snuggles into his chest. "Yeah," she says.

The star is five light-years distant, but time doesn't matter, not to her and not now. She lets herself feel the melody of the spheres, and where the song is just about to break. She feels the life of the star around her. She feels the breaking in the life. It's a small thing. She reaches out and fixes it.

After her day at work in the fields the next day she's covered in ash and mud, but Leoben's got a pot of soup cooking for dinner and the house smells delicious. Before Leoben can even ask about her day she takes off one boot and throws it at him, then tackles him when he reaches for her bare foot. He catches himself, flips them around and pins her hands over her head. She arches up to him and they settle quickly into into a fierce bout of kissing. Dinner, when they get to it, is lentil soup with barley. There's no meat, and no fruit, but these grains and legumes are precious to them, the first things they could get to grow on this broken planet. Most days they're both in the fields, trying to wring some life from this destroyed world. She thinks she could probably banish the radioactive damage from their world by sheer force of angelic will, but she's never offered and he's never asked. In any case, from what he tells her that's not how he saw it. Earth is to be built, with slow work and struggle. That's why they're here. She's learned to rely on him, to trust his visions like he trusts her strength. She doesn't think about destiny. She loves him because she wants to, and after everything they've done that should be reason enough.

After dinner they go back outside. In the distance are hulking shadows of buildings that had once been homes, but until they are rebuilt (which Leoben assures her that they will be, one day) their settlement gives so little light that it is easy to see all the stars. "Look," she says, pointing at the star he showed her the previous night. It's still there. He looks from her to the star and back again and she knows he can see the stardust on her flight jacket. She thinks that even now he's the only one who can. Her hand slips into his like it belongs there, and they watch together the living sky.

*

After five years the memories start to return of the first time she had been here, on this planet. She remembers falling, burning. She remembers Leoben lifting her from her burnt Viper. She remembers the ashes in her hand. Earth.

She remembers the moment she understood that this planet was going to kill her, that the radiation was going to burn up the rest of her humanity until nothing was left except what Leoben and her mother had both believed she would become. And yes, there is another Earth, she's been there too, an Earth that is green and alive. She can still feel its living dirt. She'd learned something, though, from the broken fingers of her childhood. She remembers shouting "Mother" to the ashes of these broken lands. She remembers Leoben's hand firm and present on the back of her neck.

She remembers watching the radiation get to him. It didn't have to kill him, he was built to resist radiation better than humans ever could, but he was going to go through this with her and godsdamnit if he couldn't be stubborn when he thought he had a destiny.

She remembers watching him die.

*

Sometimes in the evenings Kara goes to light a candle in the Temple of Artemis. Leoben likes to preach in the town square. They've talked about it, and she's agreed that it's fine, since it matters to him so much. It still sometimes aggravates her, though, and that day when she catches him speaking on the way home from the Temple she's more than usually aggravated. "There is only one God," he says. "All else is an illusion." And she wishes she could prove him wrong, but she can't speak like he can, and in any case her Gods feel too personal to talk about. Then again, there are other things she can do. She dislodges a small speck of space-dust, nothing that could do any damage, but it makes quite the spectacular fireshow as it falls to Earth. If it's an illusion, it's definitely a distracting one.

He asks Kara about it that night, while she's sitting at their kitchen table drinking his nettle tea. It's vile and the hootch she's making in the basement won't be ready for another week. "That shooting star, while I was speaking," he asks, "was that you?"

She smirks. "Can't help it," she says. "You're cute when you're speaking nonsense."

"It's the truth," he says. "And, Kara, don't. Please."

She puts down his ridiculous tea and in one motion slams him backwards against the wall behind him. "Yeah?" she says. "What are you going to do? You gonna make me confess? Make me cry out to God?" She fumbles for him, feels him hard for her. He's so easy for her. She loves it. He grabs her by the ass, supports her, and lifts one of her legs to wrap it around his waist as she buries her head in his neck. She savours the taste of his skin, the living throb of his pulse that always somehow just matches hers. She sucks once, tentatively, then harder. He works his hand between their bodies and down her pants and hits just the spot that makes her throw back her head and moan as he works it. When she catches her breath she sees the nice reddening bite she gave him, just below the side of his chin. Anyone who goes to hear him tomorrow will see him all marked up and will know perfectly well exactly how it happened.

Leoben finds her ear and tongues it and she thinks maybe he's going to bite her in return. He whispers, instead, "You're right, Kara. I do belong to you." His voice is soft and deep and hits her right where he's touching her. She's not sure what just happened, if she'd just been surrendered to or outmaneuvered, but she thinks she'll just keep kissing him and maybe figure it out later.

The next day she stands at a distance while he preaches, because she's curious what he'll say. "Today," he says, "there are no signs and wonders. We see only the sign of our planet turning and the wonder of the sky above us and the solidness of this ground on which we stand, this place to which our people have been led, and this is God's greatest wonder of all."

*

Leoben is out in the fields for the barley harvest, and Kara is planting apple seedlings for the orchard they'd like to grow. This particular valley has been resistant, it's still barren and radioactive. Leoben has seen an orchard here, though, branches and fruit and this valley filled with life. Kara injects yet another dose of antiradiation serum and snarls when this one has just as little effect as any she'd tried before. Then she closes her eyes and lets herself feel the music in the ground. It's a pattern of notes she recognizes like a half-forgotten song, only one note is broken. With a thought, she reaches out and heals it. Then she kneels, digs a hole and plants a seedling in it. She closes her eyes again. The ground is clean beneath her hands, and in it life can grow.

She opens her eyes because she knows Leoben's watching her. She doesn't look up. She wonders if it frightens him, what she's become. Sometimes it frightens her. He doesn't say anything, though. He kneels in front of her, on the other side of the seedling, and takes both her hands in his. "It's because of you that I can do this," she says. She remembers following him into a maelstrom, burning and twisting, the last remnants of her humanity stripped from her as she turned into something that could bring hope for her people and his. She entwines their fingers and presses their hands together into the living ground.

*

She thinks about forgiving him. She thinks about how much she treasures his strength, and his kisses, and his godsdamned lentil-barley soup, how she's come to rely on his certain knowledge of everything she can be. She thinks of the alliance they made that saved both their peoples. She thinks about his voice guiding her as she led the Galactica on its last journey home. She thinks about a darkened prison, concrete walls and iron bars on the door.

She thinks about a child, once, that she loved more than she had ever imagined it to be possible for her to love. She still wants to have Leoben's child. She doesn't tell him that. She doesn't know if she ever will.

She wonders if even on this planet that they are trying to bring back to life, even here, there are things that are too broken to ever be put back together.

*

The night before she goes he takes her to their fields to make love. "Don't move," he says. It's okay, she likes this game, she likes when they've played it before and knows she's going to enjoy how it ends. She lets herself be still as he licks one finger and traces complicated patterns over her chest, across one nipple, down her belly and down and up her thigh. When her eyes flutter shut he uses his other hand to gently prop her eyelids open. He wants her to see everything, the sky, the stars, the sheaves of ripe barley ready for harvest, his eyes, his naked chest rising and falling with hers. He flicks his finger quickly over her clit and that's enough, she's got to have him. She twists her hips to get more of him, and he stills his hand.

"Don't move," he says. "Tell me what you want."

And fine, she'll tell him, she doesn't care. She'll shout it. Let the apple seedlings hear her, and the swaying grass, and the stars. And whether it's "I love you" or "I need you" or "please frak me" she can see how the words change him, how her words and her hunger caress him and undo him until he's shaking and needy and completely beautiful.

He's moving his hand again. She's close. "Please," she says. "Please."

"Kara," Leoben says, "I have always been inside you."

And, frak, that's enough, that and what his fingers are doing, and she's coming, hard, with the world spinning around her. He holds her through her orgasm until she relaxes in his arms. The earth is solid beneath her. It feels good. She lets her eyes close, then opens them again. "I still want you to frak me," she says. He nods and drapes her limbs around him. She lets him feel how welcome he is inside her.

She leaves the next day when he's at work. She hates big goodbyes, and there's no need for them anyway. She'll be back.

Kara used to wonder if she had come to love Leoben only out of loyalty to her old pain. She thinks she may have loved him from the broken places first. She's starting not to care. She's glad for her love for him, wherever it may have come from. She's going to come back because she wants to be here, and after everything they've both been through she thinks that ought to be reason enough.

Before she goes she plants the seeds of poppies near the entrance of their home. Poppies are sacred to Demeter, they grow among the wheat fields and bring depleted soil back to life. Leoben's read her scriptures, probably more than she has. He knows the story.

She knows he can see her return, that his visions will give him the same certainty of her that he's always had. Still, she wants to leave him something more tangible, something he can touch as well as see. In the spring these flowers will bloom, red against the grey earth, and he will know that she is on her way.


End file.
